


Tricks & Treats

by Redrikki



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Gen, Heist, Hijinks & Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 19:31:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1720019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/pseuds/Redrikki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joshua and Alec go to a party.  Joshua eats little hot dogs and is diverting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tricks & Treats

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [da_halloween](http://community.livejournal.com/da_halloween/965.html) prompt 5

Joshua didn’t care for the Champagne. It tasted funny and the bubbles burned and tickled his nose. The little hotdogs on sticks were good though. Joshua ate them one after another, choking them down past the tightness in his throat as his eyes darted nervously around the crowded ballroom. Fine artwork decorated the alcoves and everyone smelled like alcohol, a hundred different perfumes and money. Joshua didn’t belong here and the hotdogs churned uneasily in his stomach as he waited for some else to figure that out and start screaming.

“That’s some costume,” a man commented casually. It was hard to tell under the strange mask of black and white face-paint, but Joshua thought he might be the man who talked about carpet-bombing Terminal City on TV.

“Yours, yours too,” Joshua stuttered. He wasn’t even sure what it was supposed to be. A skeleton maybe? The black circles around his eyes made the man look a bit like a panda. Joshua helped himself to another little hotdog and wished the man would go away.

Over by the bar, Alec was showing off his grappling hook to a girl in a tight black dress and pointy hat. She probably thought the dark clothes and ski mask was a costume too, but she would be wrong. Alec the thief and Joshua the dog-faced boy where the only ones here beside the waiters who were actually dressed as themselves. Tonight Alec would steal Eyes Only’s disks and Terminal City’s much-needed money while Joshua kept everyone distracted. It was a good plan. Joshua made a great distraction. He probably wouldn’t even get beaten up by X-7's this time.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” the skeleton-man said pointedly, shoving his hand at Joshua. “Erskine Mathers,” he announced importantly.

Joshua gripped the man’s hand carefully, giving it the gentle shake he’d practiced with Original Cindy. Erskine Mathers was their host, the transgenic hater from TV. His hand was clammy and smelled like Scotch and cigars. The man was an asshole and for the first time tonight Joshua didn’t feel the least bit guilty about robbing him. “Nice party. Good little hotdogs,” he said around the one in his mouth. “I’m Joshua,” he added, swallowing.

The look on Mathers’ face shifted from mild disgust to flat out amazement as his eyes went wide. “Joshua? Painter Joshua?” He grabbed Joshua’s hand again, his whole body trembling with excitement at Joshua’s hesitant nod. “The way Rita talked, I wasn’t sure you’d come. I’m a huge fan of your work,” he gushed. The somewhat awed and dewy look in his eyes reminded Joshua of the way some of the X-6's looked at Alec and Max. “Your brush-work, your use of color, the way you grasp the transcendence of the underlying metaphor,” Mathers sighed like Original Cindy with good chocolate. “It’s amazing.”

Joshua smiled gamely back. He didn’t know about transcendence. Joshua knew about paint and emotion, but if Mathers wanted to pay for metaphors Joshua wasn’t gonna complain. Paint and a city full of hungry transgenics cost money after all.

“Joshua,” a woman’s familiar voice called from behind him.

Joshua turned and there, in an alcove a few feet away, was Rita smiling broadly and surrounded by a small crowd of people. Kohl outlined her eyes like a German Shepherd and her pleated linen skirt looked vaguely like the illustrations from Father’s books on Egyptology. She looked very pretty and smelled like make-up and too much Champagne.

“How did you know it was him under that get up?” Mathers asked as he gently prodded Joshua forward with a push on the back.

“You see anyone else that tall?” Rita returned with a knowing wink and a laugh.

Her little audience missed the real joke but chuckled along with her anyway. Joshua joined in with a nervous, bark-like laugh. Everyone was looking at him now, staring. Every instinct screamed run, but Joshua stood his ground and tried to smile. “Yes,” he agreed shakily, “I am very tall.”

Rita shot him a brief, sympathetic smile. “Joshua,” she said, linking her arm through his, “Christian here” –she gestured to a cigar-smoking man dressed, oddly enough, as Mole– “thought this painting was a metaphor for modern life, but Julianne ” –Rita nodded at a cat-woman– “thinks it has something to do with sex. I was hoping you could explain.”

As if by magic, the crowd parted at her words to reveal the painting in the alcove. It was a dark, confused swirl surrounded by bright, shinny colors. It was Joshua #57. It was Alec.

“Tricks and treats,” Joshua murmured, turning away from his masterpiece. Over the heads of the much shorter crowd, the real Alec caught his gaze and gave him a slow, deliberate nod while tapping his watch. It was time. Time for Alec to steal things. Time for Joshua to be diverting. Joshua could do this. Alec was depending on him, Terminal City was depending on him. Joshua could do this. He took a deep breath, snagged another little hotdog from a passing tray, turned back to his adoring fans and began to talk.


End file.
